Highlighting the obtuse, the slanted and sometimes just plain ignorant writings found in The Gray Lady

TV

We couldn’t get away from numerous breathless media reviews of Saturday’s SNL post-election broadcast with host Dave Chappelle. It seems America couldn’t figure out what happened so they expected a lackluster collection of hack comedians – Chappelle excluded – to explain it to them.

And gee, did they get an unexpected bellyful of hoots.

Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton attempted to co-opt a Leonard Cohen song, “Hallelujah” with lyrics that made even the most casual Hillary follower roll their eyes: “I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you…”

Uh-humm. Comedy scribes can’t re-write history. And Hillary was hardly a truth-teller. So how is it a comedy show is trying to get America all misty-eyed over one of the most hardened political operators to have run on the Democratic ticket for decades? Hillary’s own campaign aides were on a constant mission throughout the campaign to make her seem “more likeable,” to get her to be more “genuine.”

To have an SNL performer portray Clinton as some bluesy, down-to-earth tragic figure belies the fact that only fools take the political opinions of entertainers seriously. No wonder all these people never saw it coming – they really didn’t get Clinton.

Really. The majority of Americans who voted for Clinton did so with the clear-eyed vision that she was a very imperfect candidate.

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It must be said that those millions who tune into SNL have become the unquestioning, undemanding echo-chamber types.

You want to see something raw and relevant from SNL? Go back to its first season, 1975, when Richard Prior hosted for the first time. Up until then the episodes were choppy and had no direction. Suddenly, with Prior, SNL had an attitude and an “in your face” identity.

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If you want to know about SNL today, like anything, look behind the scenes: Lorne Michaels, the producer, has nothing on his mind but money deals with his money partners, and this drives who he hand-picks to be on the show, grooming them for later production deals with which he can make more millions.

NBC/Universal. It’s a multi-billion multi-national corporation formerly owned by…megalithic GE. Now owned by…Comcast, an octopus of a media corporation that is looking for control of everything from theme parks to Telemundo to MSNBC to Dreamworks. They want to control content and then they want to control how you receive that content.

That’s Orwellian.

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But, hey. You just want to watch some funny skits. Get distracted. Forget about all the big issues.

That’s what they want you to do, too. And they don’t want you to notice them while they’re doing it.

[Post-Election Update: Trump’s rural voters showed up at the polls. Hillary only had support – and not enough – in the cities. Generally speaking. That said, Bret Baier managed to spread a whopper of a lie late in the campaign reporting the FBI had an active investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Not true. He later came out and said he was wrong.

The damage was done. Another lie by Fox. The problem: Baier, as opposed to Hannity and their other blowhards, is deemed a “newsman” by the network. Yes, they do make distinctions, for those of your who follow these things.]

How desperate is the Fox News spin machine these days?

On the 23rd October Fox News show Bret Baier actually said the reason Donald Trump is getting beat by Hillary Clinton in nearly every national poll is because Trump supporters are afraid to admit to pollsters that they support Trump.

That’s news to us.

It’s also news to pollsters who ensure likely voters give them valid answers. If pollsters don’t get reliable results, they don’t make money – it’s that simple. They are paid to be accurate. They are NOT paid to be advocates one way or the other. (Well, unless you’re working for outliers, fringe groups or a news network that employs personalities who have vested their personal fortunes in the election of Donald Trump. Um hmph -Hannity!

We just finished watching the October 24th 2016 evening broadcast of the PBS Newshour. We were aghast at their slanted coverage against American Sioux Tribes protesting the building of oil pipelines across tribal lands and – most importantly – the planned pipeline under protected waterways that supply vital drinking water to the tribes.

The reporter practically pushed the cause of oil companies and their arguments. No where was there any interview from any Tribal representative. No where did it mention that Bakken oil sludge is the dirtiest, most costliest to process in the world.

Instead, PBS sounded like an 19th Century “Who are these injuns and we can do what we want on their land!” kind of story.

It is sovereign land. When will the United States finally accept the law that granted Native Americans the right to rule over their own land?

To underscore Public Broadcasting’s disgraceful lack of respect for Native Americans and their issues, after a quick dismissal of this massive tribal conflict, PBS spent the next 10 minutes on one of their more favored subjects, Syria, where they managed to ingterview a Syrian about the war for a good 10 minutes.

We are left to assume that the supposed Liberals at PBS care not for the very important issues going on in their back yards with Native Americans.

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When you want to belittle a cause, simply silence the voices of the cause. That is what Judy Woodruff – news editor – and PBS chose to do in this very important sovereign issue on Native American rights. (Note: First Nations is the term used in Canada while in the US Native American is still commonly used. Aboriginal or Indiginous peoples are also generalized terms used.)

It’s important to realize that Warren Buffet is a large advertiser with PBS. Warren Buffet has directly invested $Billions in the oil pipeline in stock buys in pipeline companies and has also increased his $Billions already invested in oil refinery corporation Phillips 66.

A couple months ago a BNSF derailment and subsequent explosion caused massive damage out West – it was covered by all the major news services. PBS made no mention of this major environmental disaster.

The tennis world is in a self-righteous outrage over France’s Gael Monfils. It seems the gatekeepers like John McEnroe and others didn’t care for Monfils performance in his semi-final loss against Novak Djokovich in which at times Monfils stood flat-footed for Novak’s serves. The New York US Open crowd – notoriously the worst tennis-worthy crowds in the Grand Slams – heartily booed disapprovingly.

Tsk, tsk.

For anyone who has followed Monfils in his long, colorful career we can only say, What did you expect? He’s the genius of the unexpected. He was getting trounced by the powerful Djokovich and so Gael went Zen. He decided to get inside Djok’s head. It worked. It worked enough to get Novak frustrated enough to rip his shirt on court as if he was the Incredible Hulk. It worked enough that Gael won the 3rd set. It just wasn’t enough to win the match.

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We find it laughable that those who pretend to speak for the game of tennis condemn someone like Gael Monfils who has toiled in the middle ranks for well over a decade entertaining and thrilling crowds all over the world.

We find it equally laughable that a USTA player as personally reprehensible as Nick Kyrgios of Australia is promoted in tennis so wildly that he is featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, yet his own country of Australia finds him so demeaning that their Olympic Committee refused to allow Kyrgios to represent them in this past Summer Olympics.

That is the world of tennis. Where the Powers That Be try to crush Free Spirits like Gael Monfils.

And, also, where everyone forgets it was just in 2009 at the US Open when “the greatest tennis player in the world(sic)” threatened a small lineswoman with “I’ll F**cking take the ball and shove it down your f**cking throat!”

He’s grown too lazy as a journalist and is in danger of becoming another Brian Williams-like embarrassment to real newsmen.

When he presents guests like adenoidal Ian Bremmer, a supposed international expert who instead is a paid hack for international business interests, and lets him go on like a junior George Clooney wannabe then we have to question Charlie’s ability to screen guests.

While every news pundit in the USA jumps all over Donald Trump for his hero-worshiping of Russian despot Vladimir Putin, it is worth noting that it was less than 1 year ago that Charlie Rose famously interviewed Putin and was left looking like a wimpering suck-up, never challenging Putin on any substantive level. We were left thinking that the only possible explanation was that – like Donald Trump – Charlie Rose was being so nice to Putin because he was looking for business deals after the interview was over.

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Charlie Rose has become a Status Quo man.

It became evident in his combative interviews with candidate Bernie Sanders while Rose was chummy and softball friendly with his pal Hillary Clinton.

The last thing we want in this country is status quo. We need journalists who ask the hard, salient, relevant questions – then follow up those questions when guests lie or obfuscate or twist in the wind.

That’s important to remember when Chris Wallace of Fox News – just named as one of the Presidential Candidate debate moderators – stated that it wasn’t his job to “be a fact checker” in the debates.

Well if Chris Wallace can’t even tell a fact from a lie in a presidential debate, how the hell did he get put in one of the most important jobs in this 2016 election?

Innovations drive corporate profits. It’s a given. During last year’s NCCA basketball broadcasts viewers were given the option to watch gamecasts with announcers from their home teams and it was wildly popular.

Just as in this miserable 2016 election year when we’ve had to listen to woefully inadequate media moderators, why should sports fans have to listen to the ignorant and ill-informed opinions of poorly chosen sports announcers?

Give sports fans the choice of simply watching the broadcast with only the athletes and ambient fan sound.

We’ve had enough already of this year’s US Open coverage and the dribbling childish rants of Brad Gilbert and others on ESPN that only detract from the enjoyment of a good tennis match. If you don’t want to hear one of the ever-present McEnroe brothers how about the option of just doing without?

And using the mute button is not an option if you want to hear the players, the fans’ reactions, the “smack!” of the racket making hard contact with the ball.

No, it’s time to give TV viewers a different, better option, and one that acknowledges choice. Because as viewers we are paying for this service and we deserve the choice of how we view these events – not to have the broadcasters shove them down our throats as they want us to consume them.

Some overseas Olympic broadcasters gave their viewers the option of watching events without obnoxious NBC commentators. Many stated how the beauty of competition was augmented without the obtrusive interjections of paid sports promoters.

For anyone needing a vicarious trip to locations around the world the “Globe Trekker” TV series has been the reliable place to go for decades. Globe Trekker started years ago giving viewers a realistic, foot-on-the-ground experience for the youthful, backpack oriented crowd.

In recent years GT has regretfully fallen prey to its choice of inexperienced hosts who leave viewers feeling as if they’re being led on a tour by attention-deficit afflicted grade-schoolers whose comments were akin to “Wow!” or “Gosh!”

We could reference the particularly woeful host who spent an entire hour long shipboard episode rounding Cape Horn whinging and puking and complaining of having to do chores while on the small ship.

Well, thank goodness! Old GT travelhand Ian Wright is back on the road and righting the course for the venerable television series.

Not only Wright, but host Judith Jones has added a bright, intelligent flavor to GT with her episodes.

Now, if GT would only get rid of such self-serving losers as Bobby Chinn…

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PS: Globe Trekker used to be associated with Lonely Planet, probably the best travel guide company doing business around. This isn’t a promotion, it’s just a good suggestion. If you need to know about a destination, Lonely Planet is the resource you need.